Parents: school used webcam to spy on our kid at home

If it's a school-issued laptop, does the school have the right to spy on kids …

School-issued laptops are becoming more and more common these days, but thanks to the action of one high school, students and parents might have second thoughts about bringing them home. The parents of a Pennsylvania high school student, Blake J. Robbins, have filed a lawsuit against his school district after discovering that school officials had allegedly been remotely accessing the laptop in order to take webcam photos of the students at home (via BoingBoing). There are a number of unanswered questions about this story, but if true, it could mean serious penalties for the Lower Merion School District.

According to the complaint, the school in question (Harriton High School) had issued laptops equipped with built-in webcams to every student so that they could have "24/7 access to school based resources" and the ability to work seamlessly between school and home when it comes to research and projects. In November of 2009, however, Robbins was disciplined by the Assistant Principal of his school, Lindy Matsko, for engaging in "improper behavior" in his home. At that time, Matsko cited a photograph from the built-in webcam on the laptop.

Robbins' father Michael supposedly confirmed with Matsko that the school has the ability to remotely activate the webcam "at any time it chose to view and capture whatever images were in front of the webcam." Needless to say, Robbins' parents were outraged at this development, as neither the school nor the district had told parents about this capability. As a result, the Robbins have filed a class-action lawsuit against the district, charging it with interception of electronic communications under the ECPA, theft of intellectual property under the CFAA, violations of the Stored Communications Act, violations of the Civil Rights Act, invasions of privacy, and violations of the Pennsylvania wiretapping and electronic surveillance act.

Ars tried to get clarification from Harriton High School about its laptop policy, but were told that no one at the school would be willing to discuss it with us. (Merion School District has not responded to our request for comment either.) As such, we're left speculating as to what else could have happened to led up to this seemingly surreal series of events.

It's possible that things may have played out differently than the complaint alleges, though. If it was a MacBook, for example, Blake may have used the built-in Photo Booth software to take a picture of himself doing something questionable while at home, which may or may not be against the school's policy. If that photo got posted online or even synced back with the school's admins the next day, it's possible that Matsko was given access to the photo for disciplinary purposes. This, of course, doesn't account for the claim that Matsko confirmed with Michael Robbins that the school could (and had) spied on Blake remotely, but we haven't heard the school's side of the story yet.

If the Robbins' allegations are true, then it certainly looks as if there were serious privacy violations at hand. The school may have the right to retain admin control over its own laptops, but spying on kids at home without their knowledge is likely not one of them. This is similar to a case from 2008 when a Florida woman took her laptop in for repairs and eventually discovered it was rigged up to take webcam photos of her at home without her knowledge. The Peeping Tom in that case ended up confessing to the deed and getting arrested, but things could get far more complicated if a government entity (in this case, a public school) was the one guilty of the peeping.